Man gets maximum sentence for crash involving officer

Monday

May 5, 2014 at 12:01 AMMay 6, 2014 at 9:47 AM

A 43-year-old South Side man was sentenced yesterday to 3 1/2 years behind bars for a crash that injured a Columbus police officer and a woman on a North Side freeway ramp. Alphonso Jennings III of Ellsworth Avenue pleaded guilty in February to two counts of aggravated vehicular assault and one count of impaired driving.

John Futty, The Columbus Dispatch

Columbus police Sgt. Steve Livingston hasn’t experienced a day without pain in the nearly two years since an impaired driver in an SUV slammed into him and a woman as they stood near a North Side freeway ramp.

“I was thrown 45 feet through the air, bounced off a car, was impaled on a guardrail and bounced off the ground,” he said yesterday, choking back tears in a Franklin County Common Pleas courtroom.

“I watched the white of my uniform shirt turn red with my own blood,” he said.

The 43-year-old officer recalled somehow remaining conscious and listening as paramedics worried that he wouldn’t survive the four-minute wait for a medical helicopter.

He spent two weeks in a hospital and two months in a rehabilitation center, endured 18 surgeries — another one is scheduled — and missed 15 months of work. He remains on restricted duty and worries that he might lose “the career I love,” he said.

All because, in Livingston’s words, Alphonso Jennings III decided “to operate a motor vehicle while higher than a kite on drugs.”

Jennings, 43, apologized in court before he was sentenced to three years in prison and six months in jail for the July 15, 2012, crash.

“It wasn’t intentional,” he said. “It was not a malicious act. It was just an accident.”

But Jennings wasn’t charged with intentionally striking the officer or Morgan Salisbury, who also was seriously injured, Assistant Prosecutor William Walton said. He was charged with causing the injuries by driving recklessly while impaired.

Jennings, of Ellsworth Avenue on the South Side, was driving a Chevy Tahoe from northbound I-71 onto the ramp to westbound I-270 on the North Side when he struck Livingston and Salisbury, who were standing beside the ramp at the scene of a one-car crash.

Salisbury, 25, also spoke in court, saying that her injuries, which included a broken hip, left her with mental and physical scars that won’t go away.

Livingston said he thinks Jennings panicked at the sight of a police officer along the ramp because he was driving an SUV “that smelled like a weed factory.” A blood test showed that he was under the influence of marijuana.

Jennings pleaded guilty in February to two counts of aggravated vehicular assault and one count of operating a motor vehicle while impaired.

Judge Colleen O’Donnell imposed the maximum sentence for the offenses, which was recommended by the prosecution and defense as part of a plea agreement. She also suspended his driver’s license for three years.

Jennings’ attorney, Byron Potts, said he expects to file a request for judicial release after his client serves 18 months.

“I ask for you to ignore that request,” Livingston told the judge.

Assistant Prosecutor Keith McGrath said the prosecutor’s office will oppose any request to allow Jennings to be released before serving his full sentence.